Epilogue
by sosmitten
Summary: A year from their original wedding date, L/L reflect on their relationship. Originally posted at BWR.


**Disclaimer: **They're not mine. I'm just borrowing them long enough to make them happy.

**Author's Note:** This was written for the L/L 2006 Summer Ficathon for **Rae**. The request is at the end. **Cinefille**, **iheartbridges**, and **Lula Bo** continue to be awesome to me, even though this was the third thing I sent them in the space of a week.

* * *

**June 3, 2007 **

A beam of bright morning light finds its way under the shade and through the lacy curtain to dance across Luke's face, bringing him out of his half-awake state. He turns his head to the side, just out of the sun's reach, and watches Lorelai, lying on her side facing him, her arm slung across his chest.

The way she sleeps is one of the little things that's different since they've been back together, and it had been one of the things he'd missed the most during the long nights without her. Alone in his bed, he'd taken to holding a pillow, imagining her pulled tight against his chest, imagining the soft tendrils of her hair on his face. He'd remembered with longing the way he'd wake her with soft kisses on her shoulder and fingertips across her belly and over her breasts, her body an open canvas for his touch.

But ever since the first night he'd slept in her bed again, she curls herself against him, head on his shoulder, legs tucked underneath his knees. She's given no explanation for the change other than a whispered remark about wanting to be able to look at him. He's wondered sometimes if there's more to it than that, but it's easier not to wonder, to marvel at the fact that he can now see her face while she sleeps in the warm light of morning. That he can trace his finger around her eyes and down her cheek, and ease her awake with kisses planted gently on her brow.

Now though, he doesn't wake her, just twists his body over to see the clock, the bright red numbers indicating that it's just before seven. He feels her shift and turns back to find her stirring. Her eyelids flutter open and her lips curve into a smile that's brilliant even through the haze of sleep, and makes him almost able to ignore the fact that after all these months, there's still a bit of relief in her expression when she first sees him in the morning.

That fleeting look is one of the few lingering reminders of all they've been through. She's become less constantly cautious around him and the fear has faded from her eyes, but there's still that brief moment when she wakes in which it looks like she's worried he's an illusion.

"Hey," she says, the word drunk and slow with sleep.

He smiles back at her. "Hey." He smoothes her hair and presses his lips to her forehead. "It's early. You can go back to sleep."

She nods drowsily, her eyes drifting closed. "You too?"

"I'll be back in a bit," he answers, but he's not sure she's awake enough to hear. He slips quietly out of bed, pulling on a pair of jeans over his boxers and then tugging a t-shirt over his head.

Before he turns to head downstairs he stops, resting his hand against the doorframe and watching her. The realization of what today is has made him reflective and he can't help but think about the year they've been through and how it's changed them – as individuals and as a couple. Fundamentally, they're still the same: Lorelai's fun, outgoing self balancing his quiet status quo. But there have been small shifts in their personalities. He's learned to share more – his life, his thoughts, his love. It's becoming more natural to tell Lorelai things and he doesn't have to constantly remind himself to include her.

Lorelai is different too. She's always had a serious side, but she usually hides it under wit and friendly conversation; now that serious side is closer to the surface and more thoroughly present. He catches her during thoughtful moments when she looks sad, but then she'll look up at him and smile.

As a couple, they don't take each other for granted. They go out of their way to make time for each other and to do things for each other. Ever since they've been married, Lorelai has gone behind his back every once in a while to make sure the diner is covered so that she can steal Luke away for the evening. The first time was so that he and April could have dinner out, to hang out and talk without the town hovering over them. The second time she'd planned a romantic dinner for the two of them. The third time she'd come into the diner to announce the plans she'd made for him with April, and on impulse he'd pulled her suddenly behind the curtain.

"What? What did I do?" she'd protested playfully.

"You just keep messing with my schedule," he'd said, his tone frustrated, but his eyes teasing. "You know, I thought _I_ was the owner of the diner."

He'd seen a flash of uncertainty in her expression as she'd stammered, "I just thought-"

Before she'd been able to finish, he'd cut her off with a kiss. "You thought right. Thank you." After kissing her again, he'd added, "And you're coming with us."

Now he just knows that when he sees Lane and she's not scheduled to work, he should be expecting Lorelai to show up with a change of clothes for him. It's one of her little ways of showing him how much she wants to be wholly in his life, while still respecting his time with April.

Because of all of that, because of the ways that he and she and they have changed, he wants to acknowledge this date somehow. It would have been their first anniversary, after all, and he can't help but feel regret about that – regret for the lost time, for all the unnecessary pain. So, he has a plan. Nothing too involved, but recognition nonetheless.

* * *

When she wakes the second time, it's because of the coffee. It smells particularly fresh, particularly strong, particularly _close_. She opens her eyes to see steam rising from a mug, which sits on a tray held by her husband.

The image is so incongruous that she has to blink several times to convince herself that he's really standing there. "Luke?"

"Yeah?"

She points to the tray. "What's this?" Then she looks over and sees a single long-stemmed red rose in a vase on the bedside table. "What's that?"

He gives a nonchalant nod toward the tray, "Breakfast," and then motions with his head, "flower."

"But why?"

"I can't make you breakfast in bed?"

"Um, sure you can," she answers hesitantly, still confused, "but what happened to the 'no food in bed 'cause I don't want to roll over onto a pile of crumbs' rule?"

He shrugs. "Don't spill."

Lorelai's brow wrinkles in consternation. "Seriously, that's all I have to do? Not spill? Why didn't you tell me that during the Great Cookie and Ice Cream Banishing of 2006?"

Luke sighs, shaking his head in defeat. "Well, that's why it's bacon and eggs instead of pancakes."

"Because of the crumbs?"

"And the syrup."

"I don't know, maple syrup could be fun," she teases, lifting her eyebrows suggestively.

He rolls his eyes and hands her the tray. "Just eat your eggs."

"What about you? Are you just going to watch me eat?"

"Hold on." He steps back toward the door, where there is a second tray resting on the floor, which he lifts and holds carefully while sliding into bed with her.

She glances down at her food, noticing that in addition to bacon and eggs, he's made toast and included wedges of cantaloupe. His own tray has more fruit, but no bacon. "Mine looks better than yours," she says with a grin.

"Good. That's why it's yours," he says matter-of-factly, before taking a bite of his eggs.

For a few minutes they eat quietly, but she's still suspicious, so she lays down her slice of bacon and looks over at him. "Luke, really, why all the production?"

There's a long pause before he answers, his voice uncertain. "I don't know…I just wanted to do something nice for you today."

"Today? What's…" She narrows her eyes, trying to connect the dots, and then feels her mouth fall open in realization. "Oh. June 3rd."

"Yeah," he says slowly.

"You know, Luke, we're married now."

"I know that, but it's still…" He pauses, and she lets him gather his thoughts. "Doesn't it make you, I don't know, sad?"

"Why?" she asks, honestly curious.

"It was supposed to be our wedding day."

She sighs. "I know, but it didn't turn out that way. And we ended up with an amazing wedding, probably better than June 3rd would have been." She takes a few more bites as he nods in agreement, a smile lighting his face for a moment.

Halfway through her piece of toast, she reaches out to touch his arm and asks him softly, "Does it make you sad?"

He takes in a breath and lets it out slowly, a wry expression on his face. "I just can't believe that we let ourselves get so screwed up. Doesn't it all seem kind of pointless?"

"Pointless? I don't know-" She stops, thinking. "I mean, we're not the same as we were. I think we're better."

"So you're okay with…with everything that happened? You don't regret it?" There's a tense edge to his voice, and she knows without looking that he's working his jaw and his eyes are pained. It's the look that flashes across his face when he's remembering how much she hurt him. She's seen it before, and she knows that she'll see it again, and she wonders if it should bother her more. If it should hurt that remembering it still makes him sad. But she knows he's forgiven her, that he trusts her, and it seems like that's enough. It would be too much to ask for him to forget it had happened.

She puts her toast down, sets her tray away from her and turns to face Luke. She shakes her head saying, "No, Luke, that's not it at all. You know I regret everything, and especially…" Her voice trails off, reluctant to say it out loud. After a moment she continues, "It kills me that I hurt you. It's the biggest mistake I've ever made and I'm going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. If I could choose one thing to go back and change, that would be it."

Luke reaches for her hand, watching as his thumb draws random patterns across her skin. "You're right," he says, his voice low and soft, "I know that. It's not like I don't have more regrets than I can count." He shakes his head sadly, "I wouldn't even know where to start if I could go back."

"Well," she breathes, "maybe it's enough that we want to go back. I guess…It's not that it's good that any of it happened, but it _did_ happen and we're different because of it." She pauses, seeing confusion on his face, and letting out a sigh of frustration that he's no closer to understanding what she's trying to tell him than he had been before. "I'm not explaining this very well."

"It's okay," he says gently. "You don't have to."

"But I want to," she insists. "It feels important, especially after you did this really sweet thing and here I am questioning you. I think it's like when Mia had cancer."

"What?"

"Oh god." Lorelai hits her hand against her forehead, then looks out at him from under her fingers. "You didn't know that? I thought you knew that?"

"No, I knew that," he assures her. "I'm just not sure what her cancer has to do with us."

"Well, no one ever wants to get sick. Mia didn't ask for it, and it scared the hell out of her, but she survived and it made her stronger. It made her think about her life and what was important to her. It's why she stayed in California, you know." She glances up at Luke and he nods. "Being sick made her realize that she wanted to be closer to her family. I mean, she jokes about the weather there, and I know she misses Stars Hollow, but she is so happy there." She'd quiet for a minute, just focusing on Luke's hand holding hers.

When she speaks again, her voice is soft. "She used to tell me that she was proud of her scars, that they reminded her of what she'd been through, and that she'd come out of it healthy. And," she pauses, wanting to be clear, "it's a little like that with us. I know we didn't get sick, but we made mistakes. We hurt each other badly, and it took a long time to recover from that, but we did, and it's made us stronger."

She stops for a moment, thinking about that look in his eyes, the one she can't figure out whether to worry about or not. "There are little things that make us remember, and that hurts, but it also makes us appreciate what we have, and because of that we treat each other better, we don't take each other for granted." She gestures across the bed. "Like this breakfast. You didn't have to do this, but you did, because you thought I needed it."

Luke just gives her a long look, then one at a time takes their trays and sets them on the floor next to the bed. When their breakfasts are safely out of the way he reaches to pull her into his arms, and she lets out a little sigh. "So do you get it?"

She can feel the vibrations of his voice when he speaks. "Yeah, I think so. It sucked, but we got through it and now we're good."

"Very, very good." Lorelai pulls back to look him in the eye as she clarifies solemnly, "Every single day I feel lucky to be with you."

Luke just pulls her tight against him and whispers into her hair, "Me too."

She relaxes into him, her head falling to his shoulder, and her fingers tracing up and down him arm. "The only thing left is for me to get pregnant because I really, really want to have your baby."

Luke strokes his fingers through her hair, and when he speaks, his voice is gentle. "Are you worried about that? It hasn't been that long."

"I don't know," she says sadly. "I wonder sometimes if that might be the karmic price for the way we screwed things up."

She can feel him shaking his head. His words are quiet, but firm. "I don't believe in karma or fate or any of that crap. It will happen or it won't, and it won't be because of fate." He runs his fingers over her cheek and then under her chin, tilting her head up toward him. "We're healthy and we've both had kids. It'll happen."

"You're pretty confident about that."

"Well, you're not drinking caffeine and you're taking those vitamins and neither one of us is under much stress, all that stuff the doctor talked about. We're doing everything we can do."

"That's for sure," Lorelai's laugh breaks through the seriousness of the moment. "If it doesn't happen, it certainly won't be for lack of trying."

Luke chuckles. "No, no, it won't. Speaking of which…" His words trail off as he presses his lips to the corner of her mouth and then kisses a path along her jaw, while his fingers run along the top edge of her nightgown.

Lorelai gives a little whimper and asks breathlessly, "So, does that mean that you got me out of that morning meeting I have at the inn?"

"Mmm hmm," he murmurs, lowering her down onto the bed and kissing down her shoulder.

She moans. "That's good. I mean, wait!" He looks at her with surprise as she props herself up on her elbows, grinning madly. "How dare you mess with my schedule? Who runs the inn, anyway?"

He just laughs and says, "What goes around comes around."

_Fin_

**Prompt: **

_As she floats in the kitchen, I'm tasting the smell_

_of toast as the butter runs._

_Then she comes, spilling crumbs on the bed and I shake my head._

_And it's only the giving that makes you what you are._

Wond'ring Aloud by Jethro Tull

**Could have: **

Waking up together - first time, anytime, time-frame is all yours.


End file.
